GAR

Clint, Monte and I headed to Prescott Friday night to race in the Gilmore Adventure Race. We camped out before the race last year, but opted for a good nights sleep and got a hotel room this time. We were a little worried about getting a decent room for cheap at the last minute, but lucked out and stayed in a really nice place. We were all wishing we could've stayed the whole weekend there. Anyway, we took off early Saturday morning to the race site and set up our TA. We had our pre-race meeting, got our map and plotted our coordinates, and started out with a trekking section. (giving lots of details for my dad. :) ) Let me just say that I didn't know grasshoppers could be bigger than my feet. Not kidding. It's like all the grasshoppers in the entire world congregated at our race site, just to torment me. Every step we took on the run I had HUGE, MAMMOTH sized hoppers flying at my legs. Of course, Clint and Monte were being boys and throwing rocks at my legs when I wasn't looking and letting me think it was the hoppers, but still. Then as people squashed them, the live ones were either A) eating their dead friends, or B) taking advantage of them, if you know what I mean. So gross!! Anyway, we overshot our first checkpoint by at least a mile, but ended up catching everyone and making up time. After a few trekking points, we ran back to the TA and had to do a mystery event. This one was a puzzle of sorts--we had to align small squares to make a 3X3 box, and all adjacent numbers had to match. That probably doesn't make much sense. After that we hopped on our bikes and took off to find four checkpoints. While we were putting our shoes and helmets on, Clint said under his breath, "this is going to be funny", and I had no idea what he was referring to. I didn't ask, just took off. Then I started screaming and figured it out. Those dang hoppers were everywhere!!! They would jump up on my bike, on my face, I mean everywhere! I was screaming for like the first mile. Clint tried riding in front of me to try to get them out of the way but it didn't really work. Anyway, the biking section was fun but hard. We were up against a really strong headwind, and biking up hill against the wind was no fun. But the trails were great and I only fell once, which is a big improvement from last month's race. :) At our third checkpoint, we had another mystery event. This one involved filling a gallon of water using a small canister. The canister had to be balanced on a small piece of wood, the wood connected to four pieces of string. We had to hold the string by the ends and follow a piece of rope that was all twisted and loopy on the ground. We were pretty balanced out--Clint and Monte held the string and I just put my finger on one small piece, since I was the shorty of the group. Each member of the team had to be touching it, otherwise I would've let them do it on their own. That one was pretty easy, and afterward we took off on our bikes again. To get to our next stop, we could go one of two ways...1: a longer but smoother ride, or 2: a bumpy, uphill, shorter ride. We took option two and were able to beat out almost all of our competitors. I complained pretty much the whole way, but it was worth it. Once we got back to the TA, we had to crawl on our stomachs through a tunnel and then help each other over a ten foot wall. They hoisted me over just fine, but as I was hanging on from the other side I couldn't seem to let go. It was like, what, a four foot drop? I am a big sissy. Anyway I finally let go and Clint came over first then Monte. Monte is like Spiderman, he just crawled up and over. At this point we were done, but had one hour left before the official race cut-off. We had the option of trying to get a few navigation checkpoints to up our ranking, so we took off on foot and were able to get two more. It was a long, exhausting race but so fun and so worth it. We ended up placing second in our three-man coed division! I don't know what our overall rank is yet. I haven't decided if I'll race in this one next year or not. If I do, I think I want a new partner. I love racing w/ Clint and Monte, but I hate being the weakest link. I need someone a bit more on my level. I do fine on the run, but I am not a speed racer on my bike. I don't get out enough to practice, and I'm just a big scardey cat on the technical stuff. They had to wait around for me quite a bit on the biking section. Anyway, we made it back safe and sound and are catching up on sleep today. We went to sacrament, but ditched the rest and took naps. Here are a few pics from our fun weekend!

Team number: Me showing off my medal. I'm very proud!
Me and my babe
Nice face, Clint.

(Kayleen....you're taking our family pictures in a few weeks. I should've warned you that he CANNOT take a normal picture. Good luck!!!)